


Restless

by wemadguys



Series: Fictober 2020 [6]
Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Dialogue Heavy, Episode: s02e12 Unnatural Habits, F/M, Introspection, POV Jack Robinson, they never say what they mean do they
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:47:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26966938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wemadguys/pseuds/wemadguys
Summary: "Are you going to quote Shakespeare at me all night, or are you going to kiss me again?”Another unnatural habits AU where Aunt P. minds her business for a few minutes longer and Jack and Phryne snog a little, speak in code, and come to an understanding.
Relationships: Phryne Fisher/Jack Robinson
Series: Fictober 2020 [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952428
Comments: 16
Kudos: 72





	Restless

**Author's Note:**

> fictober day 10 prompt: "all i ever wanted"
> 
> As always, thanks for reading :)

“She needed you, Jack Robinson. The man who always does the right thing. The noble thing."

“Not always, Miss Fisher.”

***

And, by God, the impulse does not leave him. An unshakable agitation has brought him all the way across town to her, has spurred him from his car despite protests from his usually so insistent cautious nature. He is nothing but momentum, nothing but his own desires in _medias res_ at last, as he reaches for her. 

He scans her face with greedy eyes and sees a familiar hunger. His hands find their way to her waist in a loose but reverent hold, and the feeling of her warmth alone nearly undoes him. To hold her like this is a release in itself. It’s funny; his desire for her is as exhilarating a feeling as its presence has become mundane. Every day he burns for her. For her body. For her brilliant mind. Does she see, he wonders. Does she know that his whole being is alight with need of her?

“Jack,” he hears (and feels in the rush of warm air that reaches his mouth, sending a hot spark down his spine and into his groin). Her voice is somehow both pleading and tender, and it makes him realize that he’s had his eyes closed for several seconds. Too many, apparently. He opens them and is unprepared for the look on her face: the naked hunger of a moment ago has transformed into the softest smile of understanding. Her head is cocked to the left and her eyes search his openly.

He finds himself smiling back in an overlarge and overeager gesture, but he cannot bring himself to temper it. He will not be able to hide himself while touching her. She has managed these many months to tiptoe around his love for her, to evade it as a lifelong criminal evades arrest, and she will just have to continue to do so.

Phryne. His Cleopatra. She has seeped into his every pore, his very being – and she knows it. She invites it. _A heart as deep as the pacific ocean_ , she once said. And as heavily guarded as the lost city of Atlantis, though she always has been a crack lockpicker. She is driven by impulse and passion, this much he knows. Like some aristocratic demon who collects souls as well as jewels, she will reach into his body and take everything from him – his liver, his heart, his very vitality – and add them to her collection. He will be her personal Prometheus, chained and slowly chipped away peck by agonizing peck.

This notion, long held though always dismissed, comes to mind in a blink and is gone in another – because she is in his arms right now, an expectant but patient and genuine smile on unpainted lips. Because she has waited for him. She could have taken advantage of his heart a hundred times and she never has. Even in this moment, her hands are at her sides, eyes buzzing with life but body still. Even now she will wait for him to come to her.

The worst part about Phryne is not that she is Cleopatra, a demon, or the villain from a cruel Greek myth – but that she is none of those things.

The thought makes him dizzy with desire, and it is the push he needs to close the final distance. He flexes his fingers on her back, glances wildly at her lips, and pulls her to him in a flash. She gasps right before his lips reach hers, so he finds her mouth open and closes both his lips around her bottom one. As if the touch is the turning over of an ignition, Phryne hums to life against him. Her hands immediately fly to his back underneath his jacket, and he cannot help but groan at this first contact from her. He retaliates by opening his mouth against hers and slipping his tongue between her lips. She sucks him into her mouth – hot, velvety perfection – and pulls him flush against her. Her hand goes to his cheek and he feels her thumb stroking his skin.

Their kisses are slow but deep and quickly grow competitive. He moves his hands to grip her arse and suddenly her nails are scraping down his back. When she bites at his bottom lip, he grinds his stiffening cock into her center. She pulls her mouth from his then, murmers, "mmmm, Jack," before lifting a leg out from under her dressing gown and hitching it around his own to increase the pressure.

He isn't expecting the sensation of her bare flesh through his trousers, so it's his turn to lift his head (he'd taken advantage of his free mouth by leaning down to leave a trail of sloppy, ardent kisses along the expanse of her elegant neck) and gasp, "Phryne."

She grabs his face and kisses him again, open mouthed. He wants to crawl into her skin. His arms fully encircle her waist, tight, in a valiant attempt. In so doing, however, Jack loses his balance and ends up falling backward with her in his arms. Her weight forces him to collide with the wall behind him with an audible thump. 

He tears his mouth from hers, hands going to the back of her head in a soothing, embarrassed gesture.

"I-I'm sorry," he whispers breathlessly, mortified. 

"Oh," she breathes in a high-pitched voice, and there is a glazed look in her eyes that makes him want to kiss her again. He leans in to do just that but is startled by the sudden cry of a baby. 

Jack breathes out a laugh and leans down to lay his forehead on top of Phryne’s head in exasperation. She laughs too, a quiet husky thing. Acting on pure instinct, he lets his head fall further, to her warm shoulder, still shaking with near-silent chuckles. Her fingers find their way into his hair then, undoing the work of his pomade and stroking through his curls.

It is pure bliss. "Phryne," he groans in a whisper.

Her fingertips continue their exploration of his scalp, increasing their pace to something near frantic. "Jack," she breathes urgently into his ear.

"Phryne," he repeats.

Trailing off, he wrenches his head up so he can meet her eyes. They are bottomless. "Kiss me, Jack," she commands.

Before he can move to acquiesce, a voice sounds from down the hall. "I'm coming, little one.”

Jack can feel his face going slack with panic. As he glances to Phryne for assistance, he feels her hand over his. She darts her eyes to his and then toward the stairs next to them. He tilts his chin infinitesimally in assent, and in a blink he’s being wrenched upwards.

***

Once safely in her room, Phryne leaning against the closed door and Jack somehow standing in the middle of the space, they turn to stare at one another. He would have liked for Phryne to pull him up to her rooms entirely of her own volition, and he does not want her to think that their escape from detection means that further...service is required.

But of course, his chivalry is wasted on Phryne. After taking a moment to catch her breath, her eyes turn sharp and her smile predatory. Taking slow steps toward Jack and pushing her dressing gown off one shoulder enticingly, she asks, “Now, where were we, inspector?”

He swallows loudly, uncertain of himself for the first time tonight. Her face falls instantly. _Will I ever be able to be what she needs?_ he wonders, eyes shifting to the ground in shame.

He watches the careful movement of her feet as she continues to approach him anyway, and he is startled when she reaches to grasp his fingers in her own, ceasing their anxious drumming on his trousers. “Come sit,” she says brightly – as if her disappointment had been an illusion – leading him over to her extremely plush-looking chaise lounge. 

He sinks into the cushions and finally braves a look at Phryne who is bounding across the room toward a whiskey decanter. “Drink?” she asks casually, just as she has a hundred times.

“Sounds nice,” Jack admits just as he has a hundred times, sighing and leaning back into the pillows.

She returns and hands him a small glass of the stuff, their fingers brushing. They share a fraught bout of eye contact at the sensation, a reminder of the heat between them only moments before. But it soon passes, and Phryne sits a respectable distance from him on the small sofa, facing him with legs tucked partially underneath her. Silence descends on them both as they sip and let their private thoughts fill the empty space.

Phryne is the first to speak. “It’s not much, I know,” she states with a hint of apology as she gestures toward him. “The whiskey, I mean.” Sensing she has more to say, he stays silent. “See, I didn’t know you were coming, Jack. I had no chance to prepare anything else, like…”

“Like a meal?” he supplies eventually.

“Yes, exactly," she responds with forced politeness. "Like a meal. So," she continues, breathing in deeply as if to brace herself, "no matter what it is you came here for – be it a meal or one of Mr. Butler’s special mixed drinks perhaps – I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you. Because the whiskey is all I have to give.”

Jack inhales sharply at the weight behind her words. “The whiskey is wonderful, Phryne,” he responds in a low and serious voice, his mouth hemorrhaging truth and his eyes confessing all to her. “It’s always been so wonderful.”

With a sad smile, she asks, “But it’s not enough, is it Jack?” She’s the most resourceful and tenacious person he’s ever known, but here, tonight, she looks almost defeated. “For someone with as...voracious an appetite as yours, it can never be enough.”

As he takes in her words, he feels his heart begin to unravel. “You think I’m demanding more than my fair share,” he states, mortified to find that, of all things, tears begin pricking at the corners of his eyes.

“No!” she declares emphatically, her eyes meeting his in a blaze before wrenching her head away to turn her gaze on the rest of the room. “Of course not, Jack. You deserve,” she swallows and he finds himself transfixed by the movement of her throat, “you deserve _everything_ you want – down to the last crumb. I am simply telling you that I can’t give it to you.”

Brave to the end, she meets his eyes, her own steely in their resignation. He could break so easily right now, could take her at her word and shatter into jagged, bitter pieces. But he will not leave without having his own say.

"You may be right," he begins in a polite, detached voice, "that I haven't found what I sought here tonight."

"Jack,” Phryne interjects as he pauses to gather his thoughts, "it's alright. You don't have to explain."

"I believe I do," he contradicts thoughtfully. "Because you're wrong. I'm not hungry at all, nor parched. I'm tired."

"Tired," she repeats uncertainly – as if to test the limits of the word.

“Yes. I have been so tired for so long...years perhaps.” His gaze is intent on hers, and he is pleased to see that she is truly listening to him now, her mind working quickly to understand him. “Nights are the worst, though usually I struggle through. But tonight, after I left Rosie, I couldn’t quiet my mind.” 

The muscle memory of lifting his gun, aiming for Fletcher’s pathetic hide, and pulling the trigger all in one fluid motion, as easy and smooth as a knife slicing through butter, makes him curl his right hand into a fist. He would never regret taking that shot. He almost wishes he could return to the moment and do it again.

“So you came here,” she prompts when he doesn’t immediately continue.

“There was nowhere else for me to go," he tells her with a nervous smile. "Because I’ve had all the rest of it, and I let it go. So all I want from you, Miss Fisher – indeed, all I have ever wanted – is a place to rest.” He reaches across the gap and takes her hand gently in his, rubbing light, shy circles on her knuckles. "If you wish to provide it."

Her gaze then is soft and searching. "Are you certain?" She asks in a high voice.

"Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much," he quotes.

"Love is merely a madness, Jack," she warns, invoking Rosalind’s reply to Orlando without missing a beat. He is once again floored by her brilliance, by the way she understands him. Her eyes are wide and have a look about them that makes Jack truly feel like he might not be alone in this after all.

“I am that unfortunate he,” he volleys, smiling wickedly.

She glares at him. “Are you going to quote Shakespeare at me all night, or are you going to kiss me again?”

His mouth goes instantly dry, lips parting in sheer want. His eyes scour her body, from her sinful hips to the curve of her firm breasts to her unbelievably enticing neck – and, finally, to her lips, contorted into the slightest self-satisfied grin. “C’mere,” he rasps.

Predatory glean back in her eye, she stands and slowly makes her way to the end of the bed, hips swinging distractingly. Once there, she reaches for the belt of her dressing gown, agonizingly drawing the process out. “I think,” she says as she pulls it through the last hole, “that it’s you who should come here.” 

Like the parting of the red sea, her gown opens, and he follows its path like a dying man seeking salvation – the amount of skin on display a revelation. Picking up where they’d left off, he wraps his arms around her waist and pulls her warm, wicked, clever, kind, beautiful mouth to his.

***

Later, when they’re satiated for the night and the only thing left to do is sleep, Phryne speaks. Head on his chest, she whispers, “I want it too, Jack. I’m tired too.”

Using the dim light shining through the window, he is able to find her cheek and languidly stroke it with the backs of two fingers. “I’ve been told I make an excellent pillow,” he answers. And though he cannot see her face, he feels her cheek stretch into a smile.

She never does reply, but sleep soon finds them both.

**Author's Note:**

> ROSALIND.  
> But, in good sooth, are you he that  
> hangs the verses on the trees, wherein Rosalind is so admired?  
> ORLANDO.  
> I swear to thee, youth, by the white hand of Rosalind, I  
> am that he, that unfortunate he.  
> ROSALIND.  
> But are you so much in love as your rhymes speak?  
> ORLANDO.  
> Neither rhyme nor reason can express how much.  
> ROSALIND.  
> Love is merely a madness; and, I tell you, deserves as  
> well a dark house and a whip as madmen do: and the reason why  
> they are not so punished and cured is, that the lunacy is so  
> ordinary that the whippers are in love too.


End file.
